From Afghanistan to Iraq, Darfur to Libya, Lynsey Addario has spent the past decade and a half capturing life on the frontline.

It was after the September 11 attacks, when the world changed, that Addario made the decision to embark on a career in photojournalism. It is a path that in subsequent years would see her travel around the world, from crisis to conflict, documenting the human cost of war. In her new book, It’s What I Do, she details the journey.

Lynsey Addario will be joining us in conversation with editor-in-charge of Reuters Wider Image, Alexia Singh, to share her story of how a relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theatre of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life.

Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist whose work appears regularly in The New York Times, National Geographic, and Time Magazine. She has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur and the Congo, and has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Genius Grant and the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting.

Photo: Lynsey Addario. Maternal Mortality in Afghanistan. Badakshan Province, November 2009.

Photography agency VII’s latest publication, Questions Without Answers, not only spans over two decades of world history, but it also spans the evolution of photojournalism and the photographers who have pioneered their own take on the industry.

The book reflects the independence that the VII founders established for themselves when they set up their agency in 2001 – the ability to change and develop and evolve. Three out of the original seven founding members were on the panel for Monday’s event, Gary Knight, Christopher Morris and John Stanmeyer. All have been able to escape the constraints of the major agency, setting their own agenda and timetables.

Three years in the making, Questions Without Answers covers a broad spectrum of reportage. Chairing the event, Alexia Singh, Editor-in-Charge of the Wider Image Desk at Thompson Reuters, remarked on the contrast of Gary Knight’s coverage in Iraq – “a terrifying blood, sweat and tears story” – to his slower paced, contemplative documentation of poverty in India.

Knight said: “I got a lot more than I bargained for. . . . I really grew a little tired of the violence and I started to think of ways to move away from that kind of photography.”

But non-conflict work also brings its horrors. In 2004, John Stanmeyer’s reached the tsunami-torn shores of Sri Lanka within 24 hours of the waves hitting, before moving on the cover the impact in Aceh.

“I’ve been in a lot of natural disasters, of course a lot of conflicts, but natural disasters have a different psychological effect,” said Stanmeyer. “In a natural disaster there is no one to blame. Who are you going to blame? Are you going to blame God? Allah? Buddha? It was a calamity of a scope that is beyond human scale. It was beyond photography, it was beyond a camera, it was beyond me.”

Christopher Morris has also made a move from conflict photography, which he initially considered “the ultimate in photography – man trying to kill another man – the ultimate evil in humanity”. But that move away from conflict photography has allowed him closer focus on the decision makers:

“For me it’s fascinating to cover politics because you cover conflict all your life and these are the people that actually carry it through, these are the people that make the decisions.”

The agency seems to have created the space for its members to explore the space that surrounds the actions of war and conflict. The fourth panellist, Lynsey Addario, said that she was always drawn to “the issues surrounding war – on the margins”.

Addario is one of the seven women who now make up the agency of 23, helping to tip the scales in this once male-dominated industry. Admitting that the work can be “physically gruelling and emotionally draining”, she said that a person’s reactions depend on their own sensitivities: “It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman.”

Knight expanded on this point:

“Too much can be made of [the gender issue] – they’re out there and they’re doing it, and they’re doing it very, very well. . . . Over the course of my career, you see many, many more women photographing, one of the problems is you don’t have many ethnicities photographing.”

To try and rectify this imbalance, VII launched a mentor programme to try and encourage photojournalism globally, giving budding photographers a chance to develop and find their own voice and audience.

In Stanmeyer’s words, this is the kind of “empowerment” that VII has brought to its members, a freedom to act independently, which Knight likened to the lunatics taking over the asylum. But Questions Without Answers is a testament to the lunatics’ success. “The challenge now,” said Knight, “is building something that will last . . . a legacy.”

Since its formation in 2001, VII Photo has represented some of the leading photojournalists of the 21st century. As a collectively owned agency, it has grown from seven to 23 members, diversifying from conflict photography to all branches of photojournalism.

VII’s new book, Questions Without Answers, tackles issues that have shaped the world in our lifetime.

A powerful visual history of the world from the end of the Cold War to the present day, the book features a startlingly wide variety of work; from coverage of the war in Iraq and the events of 9/11 to an exploration of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, from portraits of our most significant cultural figures to dispatches from the current economic crisis.

VII photographers Lynsey Addario, Gary Knight, Christopher Morris and John Stanmeyer will be at the Frontline Club to discuss the key themes in the book and their individual experiences of covering history in the making. The event will be moderated by Alexia Singh, Editor-in-Charge, Wider Image Desk at Thompson Reuters.

Lynsey Addario began photographing professionally in 1996 for The Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina, with no professional training. Since 2001, Addario has freelanced for the daily New York Times, National Geographic, and TIME while living in Mexico, Iraq, Turkey, and India, covering feature stories worldwide, in addition to conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, Lebanon, and Congo. Addario has won many awards and was part of the NYT team to win the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, for her Talibanistan photographs.

Gary Knight made his name covering the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and conflicts arond the world. His work has been widely published by magazines all over the world, exhibited globally, is in the collections of several museums and private collectors and has been the recipient of numerous high-profile awards. Knight lectures on photography an journalism at Tufts University in Boston.

Christopher Morris is also a founding member of VII. He spent the first twenty years of his career covering conflict and a further eight years as the White House photographer for Time Magazine. He has won numerous awards, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal award, the Visa d’Or award and numerous World Press Photo Awards.

John Stanmeyer another founding member of VII, has witnessed nearly every major historical event in Asia in the past 12 years, photographing the rapid changes taking place throughout the entire region. Working regularly for National Geographic Magazine and Time Magazine, Stanmeyer has been awarded the Robert Capa and numerous World Press Photo awards. In 2008 he received the National Magazine Award for this in-depth essay on the global Malaria epidemic.

Questions Without Answers will be on sale at the event and available for signing.

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